A Creature, a Crab Leg, and a Cat Stampede.

“What is that thing?” Bentley sat frozen in the street, unable to tear his eyes away from the abomination in the alleyway.

“You can see it?” The girl thought this over for a few seconds, stroking her chin in the process like an old math professor.

“Of course I can see it,” Bentley shouted, “It’s massive.” His voice had returned to him with the appearance of the creature.

“I guess attractive girls become less intimidating in the presence of a giant monster,” Bentley decided.

“Well this is an interesting development,” she announced, “Also that’s what she said.”

“What?”

“You said ‘It’s massive’ so I said—”

“Yeah I get that part, but what’s the interesting development?”

“And she called ME a pervert,” Bentley thought to himself.

“Oh, well I’ve never met a civilian who has actually been able to see one of these things,” she said, “It’s gonna make fighting it a whole lot easier… relatively speaking.”

“We’re gonna fight that thing?”

“Obviously. When I asked if you were any good with that baseball bat did you think I was helping recruit for a girl’s softball team?”

“You play softball?”

“No, it was a joke guy,” she said before facepalming in disgust, “people nowadays really have no sense of humor.”

“Sorry that I’m not on my A-game right now,” Bentley said through winces as he pushed himself to his feet, “I guess I’m not exactly at my wittiest when faced with a bloodthirsty demon monster”.

The creature let out an ear-splitting screech, clearly done listening to the small talk. The girl quickly slid ear plugs in without a hitch. Bentley wasn’t so lucky and clasped his hands over his ears in vain, his brain splitting in two until the creature finally closed its mouth. The dagger-like teeth receded back behind its monstrous lips.

“We’re gonna die,” Bentley said, his tone more akin to acknowledging a foregone conclusion than anything.

“We’re all going to die at some point,” the girl said, already slipping the ear plugs back into the pockets of her pantsuit, “But if you do exactly what I say, then it might not be today and we might even save some other people in the process.”

“May,” Bentley thought, realizing that he had forgotten about her until just now. He immediately felt horrible, despite having a perfectly valid reason for his thoughts to be wandering. Bentley considered leaving the girl behind to go protect his little sister, but he had no idea what kind of damage the monster could cause if allowed to run amok.

“Maybe the best way for me to protect her is to help stop this thing before it can do any real harm,” Bentley decided. He looked back up to the hotel room where he knew his sister lay, unaware of all the chaos about to take place right outside.

“If you keep fighting, I’m going to fight too,” Bentley decided and pounded a fist against his chest.

“You owe me some answers if we make it out of this,” Bentley said to the girl, rapping his baseball bat against an open palm in some foggy combination of anticipation and dread.

“I’ll explain everything after,” she said, “So just wait for my signal and try not to get killed.” She winked at Bentley before giving some incomprehensible hand signals and pointing to the right. Bentley took this to mean that he was supposed to wait over there until further instruction. He jogged a couple strides away and turned back to face her. With that, she began yelling obscenities at the creature and jumped up and down like a maniac in an effort to draw its attention. The monstrosity followed her with its hungry eyes and scuttled further out of the alley. This allowed Bentley to get a complete view of the beast in all its horrific glory.

It stood three stories tall, partially blocking the sun as it emerged out into the open street. A hairless pink body like that of a mole rat gave way to a slimy neck with a head on the end that looked almost entirely eel-like, although this eel head had eight dark soulless eyes rather than the usual two and a pair of twisted ram horns. Six mammoth-sized crab legs jutted out from various points on its wrinkled naked body and looked sharper than Cutco knives at the end. Bentley and his sister had always loved to get eel and crab at restaurants on special occasions but this thing that looked like it was pulled straight from a warped B-horror movie ruined both dishes for him forever.

Bentley thought he felt the ground beneath him shaking a bit, it didn’t appear to be from the eel monster’s movement this time though.

“An actual earthquake maybe?”

He turned to the side just in time to see an army of stray cats come spilling out from the same alleyway that the creature had just left. They all mewed in deafening unison and took off in a dead sprint towards the eel-headed monster, mesmerized by the pungent smell of seafood wafting from it. The horde of cats began nipping at its heels furiously while the girl continued to draw it further out into the street and away from Bentley. As soon as he realized what was about to happen, Bentley took off after the cats.

“You morons,” Bentley yelled at the cats with his hands cupped around his mouth like a makeshift megaphone, “You’re gonna get trampled!” Almost as if on command, a cat got caught beneath one of the colossal crab legs and exploded. Hair went flying everywhere, reminding Bentley of those little white flowers that he’d blow on as a kid. The cats didn’t seem to care much about their fallen comrade, maybe more excited about the prospect of having less mouths to share the food with than anything. They continued to nip away at the heels of the beast with no regard for their own lives. Bentley had always wondered why gluttony was considered one of the seven deadly sins. He now no longer wondered.

“Don’t let your hunger get the best of you,” Bentley pleaded with the cats through wheezes, feeling as if his ribs were being punched after every word. He got ready to dive headfirst into harm’s way in an effort to save the oblivious furballs.

“Wait,” the girl yelled without taking her eyes off the eel monster, “If you die then I die, and if we both die then a lot of innocent people die.”

Her brown hair shone brilliantly in the sun, he imagined how it would feel to run his fingers through it.

“She’s incredible,” Bentley thought.

MEEOOOWWWW

Another fluffy detonation snapped Bentley out of his daydream.

He had never been much of a cat person but she surely couldn’t expect him to just stand there and watch them all die. This girl seemed to know what she was doing and the last thing he wanted to do was disappoint her, but he also knew in his heart what the right thing to do was. Was it okay to sacrifice all of these innocent cats for the so-called greater good of humanity? Maybe, but there had to be a better way.

“May would expect me to at least try,” Bentley decided and looked for an opening.

“Don’t do it,” the girl pleaded as if reading his mind, “Just wait for my signal and—”

Another cat poofed out of existence at the hands, or feet rather, of the beast as it meandered forward towards the girl. Bentley made up his mind and heaved himself under the razor sharp legs of the eel monster. The girl threw up her hands in exasperation, as if the horse she’d bet on was edged out right at the finish line.

An enormous orange limb came down right beside his face, cracking the concrete beneath. Two cats gave synchronized hisses, their faces pressed tightly to Bentley’s chest. He jumped up without using his hands, something he had only seen in martial arts movies and breakdancing videos. The gallons of adrenaline pumping through his blood stream had him moving in ways that he surely was not flexible enough for. He dodged a second crab leg as it came hurtling down in front of him and jumped over a third that stabbed at him from the side. Before he could even register what was happening, he was out from under the eel monster and in front of the trash can that contained his old helmet and gloves. Bentley lifted the lid and tossed the two cats inside. He had little time to question the morality of this decision and could not come up with a better way off the top of his head to keep the cats in one place. The cats wailed and clawed hysterically from inside the can at the prospect of losing out on their seafood feast.

The girl waved her arms frantically and yelled even louder at the eel monster, doing everything she could to keep its attention on her and away from the boy with a baseball bat skittering around beneath it. It lunged at her with ferocity as it grew sick of the taunting. The girl sidestepped every attack with relative ease, delivering punches when she was able to. She continued to provoke it, waiting for it to drop its guard so that the strange guy with the baseball bat could score an open attack. However, her already low confidence in the plan’s success was steadily plummeting as the boy focused more on saving the lives of stray cats than preserving his own. She watched out of the corner of her eyes as Bentley grabbed another handful of them by the scruff of their necks.

“What a strange sight this must be,” Bentley thought, “A girl, an eel monster, and a boy with a baseball bat throwing away cats.” Luckily this street was always relatively deserted, only being visited when vans dropped off supplies at the back entrance of the hospital.

Bentley flung a pair of particularly irritated felines into the trash can with the others. His arms were covered in bites and scratches of all shapes and sizes and he could only imagine that most of the cats had never received a rabies shot. However, with the titanic eel monster hellbent on murder looming, the possibility of getting rabies did not seem like the most pressing matter at hand to Bentley.

A palm-sized auburn kitten mewed calmly from under the eel monster, seemingly unaware of the skewering crab legs that came down all around it. Bentley saw one of the legs rise up from the ground and position itself directly above the kitten. The kitten’s innocent eyes stared straight ahead at Bentley, as if asking him what he was so worked up about. Bentley took off towards the kitten about to be speared. There was no possible way that he could get there in time but it was still better than just standing and watching.

Out of nowhere, he saw a blur shoot under the eel monster and towards the cat.

“So she does have a soul after all,” Bentley smiled.

The girl had ceased trying to distract the eel monster and had taken up the mission of helping Bentley save the remaining cats. An old tabby cat peeked out from inside the jacket of her pantsuit. Bentley felt his face contort into a pout.

“Am I really jealous of a cat right now?”

The eel monster craned its neck as it continued to follow the girl, drooling at this new development. The girl tucked the kitten into her waiting arms and kept on running, trying to make it out from under the beast before it was able to take action. The crab leg that had been positioned above the kitten now followed the girl like a heat-seeking missile. The girl was mere feet from safety when her sprained ankle suddenly gave out from beneath her. She went sprawling down to the concrete before rolling over to face the pointed edge of the crab leg as it raced toward her.

Bentley’s mind wandered to lemon flavored treats. He had always wanted to try a lemon Dinkie, a limited time flavor of one of the world’s most popular snack cakes. He had only seen it in photos and had dreamed of a day when he’d be able to sink his teeth into the delicious sponge cake and its refreshing lemon flavored filling.

“I guess I’ll never get the chance,” Bentley admitted, coming to terms with the likely outcome of his current situation. The crab leg sped towards the girl and cats, ready to turn them into a shish kebab.

“Stop,” the girl screamed as she saw Bentley come flying in, “You idiot!”

“It's a shame that the last thing I’m gonna hear is someone calling me an idiot,” Bentley thought, “But I suppose dying for a beautiful girl isn’t so bad”.

He closed his eyes and prepared to complete the suicide mission.

The crab leg came down on top of them with a swift crack.

Bentley still felt the familiar aching in his ribs and lungs. He had figured that the throbbing in his head would’ve gone away too once he died. His mind returned to something the girl had said earlier.

The fact that you can still feel pain means that you’re alive.

“I’m still alive?” Bentley slowly reopened his eyes.

The girl lay there staring up at him, her skin tone had taken on a different type of pale than before, all the color having drained from her face. Beads of sweat mixed with dirt and dried blood ran down her cheeks. Her mouth hung open in shock. The cats, on the other hand, seemed unimpressed.

Bentley felt a burning sensation in his arms. He noticed that he was holding something above his head with both of them. He looked upwards and instantly realized why he was not already dead. The monster’s gigantic crab leg struggled mightily against the surface of the wooden bat, mere inches away from the top of Bentley’s skull. This same barnacle-ridden leg that Bentley had seen shatter concrete had barely left a crack in his ash wood baseball bat. The eight-eyed eel head looked just as awestruck as the girl beneath him. Bentley figured that he must’ve covered himself with the bat instinctively at the last second, because it had most definitely not been part of his plan.

“Maybe the bat was looking out for me,” Bentley thought. After all, he had sensed an almost human-like aura emitting from it earlier on the bench. He thought that it was just a nostalgia-induced hallucination though. After all, the bat was still technically an inanimate object, incapable of thinking on its own.

The eel monster opened its jaws and let out another horrific shriek as it pushed down with all its strength. The bat refused to give, but Bentley’s shaking arms were another story. Bentley felt his body starting to fold like a lawn chair as his arms lowered and the bat pressed firmly against the top of his head.

“Come on big brother,” May’s voice drifted through his ears like a sweet breeze, “You promised that you’d keep fighting.”

Bentley clamped his teeth together and pushed up on the bat with every remaining ounce of energy. His arms wobbled violently like the skydancers that sat outside of car dealerships. The creature strained its neck, snapping wildly at Bentley, but he was just barely out of its reach. With a thunderous battle cry, he locked out his arms and pushed the crab leg free from atop his head. The eel monster stumbled back, momentarily losing its balance. The girl shook herself from her temporary stupor and jumped up, sensing an opening. She tossed the kitten and tabby cat into the grass a few feet away before grabbing another one of the creature’s legs and lifting up with all her strength.

“She’s incredible,” Bentley confirmed.

She pulled the second leg free from the stable ground, like a wrestler preparing to perform a suplex on her opponent. The monster cried out as it went toppling down to its back, crashing through the bus stop awning on its way to the ground. The flyers advertising the end of the world went sailing every which way.

“It’s now or never guy,” she called to Bentley between exhausted pants.

Bentley clamored to his feet and went charging at the fallen behemoth. Every muscle screamed in agony but he was a man possessed. He felt as if everything was moving in slow motion as he bent his knees and launched himself high into the air. At the apex of the jump he raised the baseball bat over his head and brought it all the way back until his elbows faced the sky above. Anger rose up from the eight black eyes of the monster like steam. Bentley was unsure if his own eyes currently looked any different. He had a sister to protect, a beautiful girl that needed his help, and a gang of cats to release from their trash can prison. Failure wasn’t an option. Bentley felt the warmth flowing into his hands from the baseball bat, the tight grip having turned his knuckles deathly white. Both arms were set ablaze with unthinkable pain as he began his swing. Bentley let out a blood-curdling scream and brought down the baseball bat on top of the creature’s head with a strength beyond what he thought was possible.